आरम्भ है प्रचण्ड...

The fabulous Caravan magazine continues to impress. Here's Akshay Manwani's wonderful, in-depth portrait of Piyush Mishra, a staggering talent whose worth Hindi cinema has still not managed to appreciate. Read in full: An Artist's Demons.

Bits of Money

A somewhat long, detailed but ultimately very well written, non-technical, readable introduction to the question "What the hell is Bitcoin?". Highly recommended for those who care about such arcana. Read it here: "How the Bitcoin protocol actually works".

For Fellow Mathurbators

1. Courtesy Wired, exciting new developments on the Twin Prime Conjecture front. The classic tale of the loner mathematician, Yitang Zhang, who despite a long history of being ignored and savagely underemployed (he worked in a Subway sandwich shop for a while) makes astonishing advances by putting a finite bound on the separation of successive primes, thereby bringing down the gap between successive primes from infinity to 70 million! This puts the ball rolling and teams of number theorists worldwide (led by the obscenely brilliant Terence Tao) begin a race to bring the gap down. Within months the gap has been shortened significantly and mathematicians are rejoicing until another outsider, a non-participant of the group project (whose progress is being chronicled here in Terence Tao's blog's Polymath project) - a postdoc from U Montreal, James Maynard - brings the gap down to a stunning 600! This very exciting, fast-paced, wonderful math reporting reads like a thriller and offers plenty of commentary on the two schools of doing math - "the lone wolves" as exemplified by those like Yitang Zhang and James Maynard (and also by Grigori Perelman and Shinichi Mochizuki); contrasted with the "workman's way" exhibited by those like the more mainstream genius Terence Tao. Heady, fabulous stuff! Read the full story here: Sudden Progress on Prime Number Problem Has Mathematicians Buzzing.
2. From the Scientific American, dispute over two possible alternative extensions of axiomatic set theory (the ZFC: Zermelo Fraenkel Set Theory with the Axiom of Choice). Set theorists are fighting over which appendages are more appropriate - Forcing Axioms - that will disprove the Continuum Hypothesis (the hypothesis that there is no infinity "between" that of the natural numbers and that of the real numbers); and the Inner-Model Axiom - that will validate it. Critics of the Inner-Model axiom posit that it restricts the kind of multifarious infinities that may otherwise exist and that holding on to the Continuum Hypothesis may be too high a price to pay for future mathematical growth. Their opponents claim that Forcing Axioms are ugly, inelegant and workmanlike. Which one will survive? And what would it mean for tomorrow's Mathematics?  The future is pregnant with exciting possibilities! An excellent read: Dispute Over Infinity Divides Mathematicians.

The Indian Onion

Millions of Indian engineering students well up, shed quiet tears and switch their allegiance to Salman Khan after hearing his claim of being a fellow virgin. (Link.)

बटरफ्लाये इफ़ेक्ट

देखा कुछ
दिखा कुछ
सुना कुछ
सुन गया कुछ
पढ़ा कुछ
समझा कुछ
लिखा कुछ
लिख गया कुछ
भेजा कुछ
छपा कुछ

"अच्छा लिखा!" जब कहा आपने
सकपकाये हम, लगे बगलें झाँकने

बेजिन हाकुमेई के सौजन्य से: कटियाबाज़

 

 

बहुतै भयंकर कनपुरिया कटियाबाज़!

(संगीत: इंडियन ओशन)

एक अदद बेपढ़

(टाइटल सत्यव्रत की कविता "एक अदद कम्बस्टिबल" से चोरी किया हुआ)

...

वो किताबें नहीं पढ़ता था
न पढ़ पाता था लोगों को
कुछ लोग तो ये तक कहते हैं
कि पढ़ना उसे आया ही नहीं

फाड़े वो आंतें लोगों की
खून गटक पी जाता था
चूलें हिला दे ज़ेहन की
खौफ से दिल थर्राता था
औ फोड़ के सोये से कपाल
वो मगज़ गूंथता आटा सा

नाक नक्श बेढब बदरंग
हाल हुलिये से निपट फ़कीर
काम बिगाड़क, उग्र विचारक
हम सरल सपाट, वो टेढ़ी लकीर
प्रचंड अनपढ़ था वो निश्चित
इक अदद बेपढ़ - जैसे कबीर

औ सफ़ेद पन्नों की स्याह हर्फ़ हम
उसकी रंगबाज़ी से जलते थे

Hell Hath No Fury Like a Hipster Scorned

NF knows this is a quite tragic development (all deaths are!) but reading it, he just couldn't stop laughing.

Where else could this happen but Brooklyn?

मोनू के सौजन्य से

नॉएडा की फ़िल्म सिटी में नागराज का पदार्पण!

(विस्तृत फ़ोटो देखने के लिए इमेज पर क्लिक करें।)

NEETest Story Ever

There are many things that work out great for Eden of the East - a fabulous first episode (although NF has seen quite a few anime over the years, he hasn't quite seen one in which Washington DC was featured so heavily (the first episode in Eden of the East) and so wonderfully accurately! And while NF cannot (sadly) vouch for the accuracy of depictions of Shibuya, Shinjuku, Akihabara, Roppongi, Ikebukuro or the other Tokyo neighborhoods featured often in other animes, in this case at least, he could really appreciate the accuracy of the DC architecture that formed the background for the exploits of the protagonists in the first episode); a breezy, smooth flowing story arc; and wonderfully well etched characterizations.

But the thing that struck NF as the most impressive was the seamless transition of a series that looked like a simple, somewhat formulaic romcom (NF was a little apprehensive at first, given the theme, but the first episode convinced him to at least watch the complete eleven episodes of the series) into a bona fide science fictional escapade! In fact the SF themes are so subtle, unhighlighted and well stitched into the entire fabric of the series that you might be forgiven for missing out on them completely! The characters' interaction with technology is so realistic, effortless and casual that it makes you realize how even advanced technology slowly permeates our entire being with its users barely conscious of how their habits and routine have absorbed, adapted and subsumed and in turn have been subsumed by the said technology. (Another wonderful anime that manages to do this very beautifully is one of NF's all time favorites - Dennou Coil.) One wonders if it is unique to the Japanese culture to think so naturally about technology and portray its effect on society in such a restrained, understated way (the NEET phenomenon sure is very unique to the Japanese) or is it the hallmark of simply brilliant direction - after all the great Kenji Kamiyama - the director of Ghost in the Shell TV series, dons the mantle!

Great series - highly recommended!

(Omae Wa...) Honto ni Baka

It could be interpreted as an allegory for extreme competition for scarce educational opportunities (in India especially, but also in Japan and South Korea) but Nanga Fakir is sure that that was not what the creators of Baka and Test had in mind when directing the zanily, side splittingly funny anime. Its premise is that students, on the basis of their scores are split into six classes - A being the highest and F being the lowest. The allocation of study materials, educational infrastructure etc. are highly unequal and cater to the higher classes, with those at the bottom not having even tables or chairs in schools, forced instead, to make do with bad tatami mats and makeshift desks - a no-holds-barred free market fueled inequality if there ever was.

There is possibility of social mobility though. To ameliorate class tensions and offer "hope" to the downtrodden (the F class students in particular, whose tale the anime mostly is) classes can challenge each other to wars - with the victors entitled to the infrastructure of the vanquished - a great motivation for those having no resources, to pillage, confiscate and hopefully use the spoils to better their class's fate educationally by acing future tests. 

The sight of bleeding school children not being so salubrious, the school has allowed them to fight in virtual reality environments, with their avatars doing the fighting, killing and dying - the strength of each avatar  being proportional to the aggregate test scores of the students - a concept whose mix of zany and brilliant reminds NF of the great Ra, who sadly, blogs only once a year. It seems to have come from someone with an imagination as wonderful and as warped as his. NF has no hesitation in claiming that the two thirteen episode (each) seasons of Baka and Test: Summon the Beasts, were the funniest he's seen since the inimitable Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei series. 

Heartily recommended. 

The Near Future

He was a lesbian.

The Power of Moé

Ouran High School Host Club starts off as an uproariously funny anime series about a bunch of boys in a somewhat Japanese Harvard or Princeton type institute (with the distinction of the said institute being a school as opposed to a university) whose sole aim is to bring joy and happiness to the life of the girls attending the Ouran High School Academy. The jokes, however, become somewhat monotonous and repetitive by the middle (this effect is especially prominent if you watch twenty odd episodes on one day) and the ending is somewhat schmaltzy for NF's taste but overall, NF has to concede that its gags are very, very funny - often in an over-the-top, silly way that animes have become so good at delivering. NF also suspects that had he not been in a rush to finish the series off in such a short time, he wouldn't have kvetched about, in fact would have scarcely noticed the said monotony/repetitiveness. NF's quest for funny animes will now lead him to watch Hetalia: Axis Powers - another comedy epic he's heard very good things about. Wish him luck!

El, Psy, Congroo

Steins;Gate is the latest anime NF's become a fan of. It features an elaborate, complex storyline and tight, compact, well polished characterizations. A little slow in the beginning, it picks up fast from about the tenth or so episode and in its dealings with the concept of time travel - around which its entire premise is based - it is very, very clever, flirting dangerously with brilliance many a time in its 24 episode arc length.

Highly, highly recommended!

The Narcissist

When confronted with a difficult decision, he would sit back, think deeply and employ the technique of imagining his younger self reading his older self's Wikipedia entry and being impressed, or not, by the said decision.

(When) Is It OK To Be A Luddite?

NF has mixed feelings towards Battlestar Galactica. The first episode, in its undeniable brilliance raises hopes and expectations quite unlike anything in recent science fiction film/TV series memory (with the obvious exception of District 9). The initial few seasons are able to carry the drama well enough on their shoulders (the ending of the first season is again, quite unexpected and masterfully well realized) but the series sags under its own bulk later on with many plot holes looming over the horizon and some major irritants thrown in for good measure (the next time NF sees a flying object in space making a 'woosh' sound as it hurtles past, or hears the 'sound' of a deadly explosion ripping apart a spaceship, he promises he will just fucking smash the TV screen (sound needs air to travel, space is vacuum)). All this however, could have been forgiven and forgotten, since the delicate treatment of its complex storyline and impressive character development would've made such kvetching sound just grumpy and mean; and while NF is often pedantic, petulant and very demanding, (probably) one won't quite characterize him as mean. 

But it's impossible to ignore the brazenly evasive and just plain embarrassing last episode when the writers reveal themselves to be unapologetic Luddites who scurry to take refuge in occult supernaturalism to (not) explain why things happened the way they did. 

One wonders whether it was just bad, lazy writing or if there had been a quasi religious, subliminal, new-agey-spiritual-mumbo-jumbo-laden secret agenda being surreptitiously peddled all this time.

Diving in Shame, Drowning in Guilt

Dead Souls

It is well known that for some inscrutable reason, Mother Russia has had (and continues to have) a near monopoly on the production technology of almost perfectly realized mass murderers and delusional tyrants - from Ivan the Terrible to the Gardener of Human Happiness Joseph Stalin. The political repression under Tsars is so well documented not just in non-fiction but also in fiction that one is tempted to dismiss the notorious existential gloom of Russian literature as the by product of Siberian prisoners' and exiles' empty lives in a harsh, frigid, alien land. Indeed, the stench from the powerfully debilitating penal regime (katorga) was foul even during the time of Tsars and such political repression was denounced by the western Europeans of the time who took this as a sign of Russian backwardness. Chekhov himself spent a long time in the Sakhalin Island painting a grim picture of life in prison and exile in Russia.

The inevitable happened then: the Bolsheviks deposed the Tsar to usher in a new era of happiness and prosperity.

The Gulag Archipelago is a two thousand page account of pure horror, a sickeningly detailed diegesis of the sheer terror the Soviet Union unleashed in the name of the dawn of a new mankind, the scale of which staggers imagination and makes Hitler seem only mildly despotic and the notorious Tsars as mere school bullies. Solzhenitsyn's secretly pieced together historical-journalistic masterpiece presents to us essentially the modern history of Russia as seen through the lens of its extensive penal colonies scattered throughout the Soviet territories as archipelagos of concentration camps. (The word 'concentration camp' was invented by the Bolsheviks way back in the '20s, when Hitler had barely begun to capitalize on the Weimar Republic's dire finances, let alone formalized the Final Solution.) 

The magnum opus indicts not just the Brilliant Genius of Humanity but lays the ultimate responsibility of the unprecedented Stalinistic terror, deportations of entire nationalities and mass murder of Soviet citizens on an unimaginable scale, at the feet of Lenin himself. Patiently and meticulously, Solzhenitsyn peels away layers upon layers of Red Terror - starting from as early as 1918, continuing well into the civil war ('18-'22) and reaching a sublime perfection under the helmsmanship of the Coryphaeus of Sciences Joseph Stalin and his de-kulakization programs in the late '20s (discounting the several million starving to death as a result of ensuing famines).

Solzhenitsyn's thesis - that it wasn't merely an aberration, that in fact it was ingrained in the philosophies of Bolshevism and Communism itself, that the Soviet state absolutely needed the slave labor (during Stalin's time, about 10% of the Soviet population was in the Gulags - those that died were replaced in fresh purges - a total figure of about 10.5 million!) to industrialize and transition rudely from a poor to a middle income society - was explosive. Even the western democracies' Communist parties, glorifying Lenin and his reading of Marx were left red faced and were forced to reckon the ramification of their leaders' mass murders. It was particularly timely too, since professing an ardent love for Communism in the late '60s and early '70s was even fashionable - thanks to glamorous (and fierce!) public intellectuals like Sartre. (It is still cool to be radical - in no small part due to the efforts of many very gifted intellectuals - from Mayakovksy in the '20s to Sartre in the mid century to Zizek now - one wonders why such fine intelligences succumb to the allure of such repressive ideologies. Not to be left far behind, one should also remember how Heidegger, Reifenstahl etc. endorsed Nazism.) In fact, Solzhenitsyn's work was so well researched (and here we must remember how the Nobelist was working in secret, terrified of being found out and his work destroyed by the KGB) that subsequently, when he was expelled from Soviet Union with his family, all of KGB's efforts to discredit him (they compelled those who knew him to denounce him, tried to manufacture evidence to suggest that he had been an informer in the Gulag etc.) failed miserably.

The Gulag Archipelago (volumes 1-3) are not for the faint-hearted. Although highly recommended, not many can be expected to wade through a thick sludge of gore and entrails for weeks after weeks.

This is EXACTLY What It Looks Like!

(Click on image for larger resolution.)

Full Stop Top Cop

Jagdish Raj, the "you are under arrest" actor of Hindi cinema, passes away. Here's the full story. 

...the Words of the Prophet Are Written on the Subway Walls

Two very comprehensive interviews with William Gibson - the prophet on whose every word NF hangs.

The Paris Review's and io9's.

Here's the youtube video for the io9 interview:

His latest novel, The Peripheral (eleventh to be exact - three trilogies - The Sprawl, The Bridge and The Blue Ant - and The Difference Engine with Bruce Sterling being his ten till now) is rumored to be set in the far future - much unlike the trend we've seen with his first ten - with their timelines converging slowly to the present - makes NF drool in anticipation.

A Work in Progress - Part 1

At the ripe old age of thirteen, Jenny experienced her first midlife crisis, which, she would later go on to famously remark, didn't augur well for her longevity, which crisis was precipitated by her sudden realization that true communication between humans is quite impossible - not the kind of colloquial impossibility that was often invoked when the discussion of her winning the affections of a boy, anywhichever boy, arose - but the kind of hard mathematical impossibility that crushes with profound indifference the fates of billions of puny beings inhabiting an obscure blue planet at the remote end of a nondescript galaxy.  

As a consequence she decided to take matters in her own hands.

रंग लाल गुलाग का...

मेरे परिचितों के बीच यह बात छुपी नहीं है कि रूसी साहित्य के प्रति मेरा मोह कभी कभी जुनूनियत की हदें पार सकता है। ऐसा क्यूँ है और किस प्रकार ऐसी परिस्थितियां विकसित हुईं, यह एक पेचीदा और जटिल सवाल है जिसका कोई सरल जवाब, कम से कम मेरे पास तो कतई नहीं है। (क्या यह रूसी साहित्य के दुःख, दारिद्र्य, अवसाद, राजनीतिक उहापोह, बोझिल कथानकों, मीलों दूर तक फैली हुई "ठंडी खामोश बर्फ़", उदासीन नायक-नायिकाओं और दुष्ट-लेकिन-गहरे-विचारोत्तेजक व्यक्तित्व वाले खलनायकों की बदौलत है; या फिर केवल कौतुक इत्तेफ़ाक़ कि स्कूल की लाइब्रेरी में एक बारह साल के बालक के हाथ मैक्सिम गोर्की की एक किताब का पड़ जाना (वह किताब 'मदर' थी, और मेरे हाथों में उसे देख कर, और उसके बाद कुछ और रूसी जैसे नामवाली किताबों को देख कर, मेरी माँ को शक होने लगा था कि कहीं यह लड़का कम्युनिस्ट तो नहीं बनता जा रहा? दूसरे शब्दों में, "लड़का हाथ से निकला जा रहा" मालूम होता है!) - इनके बीच में कोई पक्का फैसला कर पाना काफी मुश्किल है।) मेरे ब्लॉगर के प्रोफाइल में, जो करीब छ: (सात?) साल पहले बनाया गया था, और जिसके विषय में मैं बिलकुल भूल चुका था, अभी तक 'साहित्य' सेक्शन में 'रूसी साहित्य' का ज़िक्र है।

पिंचन की महा-पुस्तक 'ग्रेविटीज़ रेनबो' ख़त्म करने के बाद मेरा ध्यान फिर रूस की ओर भटका। कुछ एक हफ्ते पहले अपने बल्गेरियन प्रोफेसर से मिलने जब मैं पहुंचा, तो उनके दफ्तर के बुकशेल्फ पर सोल्ज्हेनित्सिन की 'गुलाग आर्किपेलागो' के पहले दो वोल्यूम देख कर मेरे मन में अदमनीय लालच उत्पन्न हुआ और मैंने अपने प्रोफेसर से इन्हें उधार मांगने की धृष्टता कर दी। बात दरअसल इतनी ही थी कि मैंने केवल वोल्यूम एक ही पढ़ा था (दो बार) और दूसरे और तीसरे पर कभी नज़र ही नहीं पड़ी। खैर, मेरी इस गुस्ताखी पर प्रोफेसर साहब बड़े खुश हुए और बोले "जा बिटवा, रख ले इन्हें! मैं अपने ऑफिस के लिए एक और प्रति मंगवा लूंगा ..." इतना ही नहीं, उन्होंने मुझे बड़े उत्साहित स्वर में यह भी बताया कि आज कल वह उत्तर कोरिया के गुलागों से भागे कैदियों की सत्य-कथाएँ पढ़ रहे थे और उनके विचार से वहां सोवियत यूनियन से भी बदतर स्थितियां थीं! 

वोल्यूम एक और दो पाकर इधर मेरा मन फूला नहीं समा रहा था और शायद मैं प्रोफेसर साहब की बातों पर कुछ विशेष ध्यान भी नहीं दे रहा था। मेरा हाथ तो बस इन किताबों को महसूस करने और उनके पन्नों पर जमी गर्द की महक से उतावला हुआ जा रहा था! तो बस घर लौटते ही मैंने तीसरा वोल्यूम आर्डर किया और इन तीनों को अपनी प्लेलिस्ट पर जोड़ लिया! यह भी फैसला लिया गया कि इनके बाद जिस किताब का काम तमाम किया जायेगा, वह फ्रांसिस स्पफ़र्ड की 'रेड प्लेंटी' ('लाल प्रचुरता') होगी। इन चार किताबों के बीच अगले महीने दो-महीनों में मैं सोवियत इतिहास के विषय में करीब ढाई हज़ार पन्नों का अध्ययन करूंगा! और इस बार, जब वोल्यूम 1 (जिसे मैं तीसरी बार अब पढ़ रहा हूँ (पहली बार पढ़ते वक़्त मुझे याद है, कि सोवियत यूनियन की नृशंसता और उनके क़ानून-कायदे (जो एक स्याह मज़ाक-से लगते थे) पढ़ कर उत्पन्न अविश्वसनीयता को मैं नियंत्रित नहीं कर पाता था और पांडू के रूम में जा कर उसे सोवियत यूनियन के "आर्टिकल 58" के नियम सुनाया करता था - शुरू में पांडू जी महाराज को यह अपने परामानविक दर्शन के चिंतन में मात्र एक बाधा सदृश लगता था, लेकिन मेरा अनुमान है कि (मेरे द्वारा की गयी) थोड़ी जोर ज़बरदस्ती के बाद वह भी इस साहित्य से प्रभावित हुए बिना नहीं रह पाते थे।)) में तीन सौंवे पन्ने पर हूँ तो इस बात का ज़रूर ख्याल कर रहा हूँ कि इस मानव इतिहास के स्याह अध्याय का गहन विश्लेषण करूँ - इसीलिए कई बार पन्नों पर नज़र दौड़ाने के साथ साथ मैं विकिपीडिया से रूसी और सोवियत इतिहास के बारे में भी पढ़ता जा रहा हूँ। आशा है कि इस चौकड़ी से घमासान करने के बाद मैं थोड़ा अधिक जानकार, थोड़ा बुद्धिमान बन कर निकलूंगा! 

Pynch Me! Pynch Me Hard!

Warning: Long, meandering post.

...

After a relatively breezy two and half week study, NF is pleased to admit that he's done with Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow - often claimed, by the hottest in literary criticism, like Harold Bloom and Steven Moore, to be probably the greatest American novel ever written. Frankly speaking, NF's a bit overwhelmed by what he's experienced, is still reeling under the influence of the thick, viscous spirits he's imbibed and will need perhaps more time to digest the big, fat book, but do indulge him a bit as he tries to navigate through the rather inchoate, vague and unfortunately, necessarily inarticulate rumblings regarding the weighty masterpiece.

Here's a little blurbish introduction to the plot (no spoilers, promise):

(By the way, NF found a fabulous, fabulous Picador cover art for the book which he's attaching here. If one image could summarize the book, this has got to be it!)

...

The stage is late WW2 and the allies can sniff victory around the corner. That doesn't mean that people aren't dying however. In fact, the recent bombardment of London by the newly devised V2 rockets is wreaking havoc not only on the physical integrity of the denizens of London but also on their psyche, since the supersonic speed of the rocket causes the sound of the rockets crashing into the environs to be heard after it unleashes heavy destruction on the ground. This apparent reversal of conventional cause and effect will be seen again and again in the (many, many more) pages to come. (Apparently, the technical term for this reversal is hysteron proteron.)

However, all hope is not lost, for a group of secret service men - officers and statisticians and biologists and doctors and seers and occultists are all there to help - and have in fact closed in on a rather funny phenomenon: the sexual conquests of a certain American lieutenant posted in London, Tyron Slothrop, when plotted on the map, are exactly the same as the impact site plots of V2 rockets on the London maps - only that the conquests have happened a little earlier than the rocket bombardment; and both of these phenomena follow the Poisson distribution! Which of course means that the best predictors (in the sense of Statistics) of rocket fall sites are the coordinates of Slothrop's latest adventures in seduction! (And of course, the converse would mean that if only the damned American not been so promiscuous, perhaps the citizens of London would've been spared the V2 destruction.) Hysteron proteron rears its ugly mug again!

Perhaps all this is a result of Pavlovian conditioning experiments done on Slothrop in his early childhood. Although the child was at the end, deconditioned; and all those memories have nary a trace left, perhaps a leftover residual of that early conditioning may be responsible for this weird phenomenon. If only there was a way to use this knowledge in an effective way...

(Interestingly enough, there were actual such conditioning experiments done on infants - one of them by the famous behavioralist John Watson! See Little Albert Experiment.)

Add to this rather zany plot, Operation Backfire, Operation Paperclip and the governments of the US, UK and the Soviet Union all scrambling to get their hands on the engineers and scientists who worked on the V2 rocket technology - not to try them or put them behind bars but to use them for building their own rocket propulsion systems which would prove more than handy in the impending to all but the blind, Cold War, the American government in particular, going so far as to erase the political histories of the Nazi scientists and whitewashing their anti-semitic, Nazi past - exactly opposite to what Tarantino's Basterds set out to do, their grisly forehead swastika engravings ensuring instant recognition: once a Nazi, always a Nazi. In fact, the Nazi scientist Werner von Braun was smuggled to America where he went on to work for NASA and was critical to their successful space missions while his assistant Helmut Gröttrup was captured by the Soviets and was of course dumped in a gulag (actually a sharashka, where Solzhenitsyn spent a few years too - the roman à clef The First Circle being a thinly disguised version). In this very complex cat and mouse game, Slothrop, with his secret (even to himself) powers can be more than instrumental - a fact all three governments can agree on!

...

The book has hundreds of characters, most of which have guest appearances only; but the most important one is Tyrone Slothrop whose misadventures we trace through a Pynchonian lens as he runs and moseys and waddles and stumbles and rolls and fucks across war torn Europe singing funny, vulgar, sometimes nonsensical songs, spotting danger a mile away and then plunging headlong into it, and in general, prompted by his increasingly intense paranoia, trying to run away from Those who are controlling him, yet quite powerless to rise above the supposed residual conditioning that compels him in ways he sometimes isn't even aware of.

Gravity's Rainbow is undoubtedly a quite staggering, overwhelmingly accomplished achievement written by someone possessing obscene, crushingly high intelligence. The fact that it was published in 1973 is enough to qualify the effort as nothing short of miraculous! It's long, complex, dense, hard, heavy, perverted, spectacularly funny, sickeningly transgressive, unapologetically scatophlic, brilliantly plotted, fantastically well written and in short, unbelievably brilliant. 

The only minor complaint, which NF would like to be subsumed in the sea of praise he hopes to inundate this "review" in, is the rather silly and sophomoric way in which Pynchon likes to use certain mathematical concepts - naming names like Hilbert Spaess, describing rocket trajectories in their constituent $\Delta x$s and $\Delta y$s and $\Delta t$s which don't add much to the text either in terms of comedy or in terms profundities. (Though truth be told, when, in a recent, somewhat upscale-ish party in The Brook, the subject of Pynchon was raised (...hence the adjective 'upscale-ish' for the party!) and NF whined about this so called irritant, the ever-so-suave Michael Budassi interrupted him mid-sentence to observe how (rather hypocritically) NF himself, in one of his ''Short Fictional Pieces'' named his protagonist "Limp Member"! However, instead of being somewhat embarrassed, the shameless NF quietly glowed golden for being featured in the same sentence as Thomas-fucking-Pynchon!) One may surmise that this anality about being not silly or flippant about mathy concepts comes from NF's being a worshipper at the altar of Greg Egan whose unapologetically hardcore science fiction sometimes is way too much for even specialists to follow. (His story Planck Drive, which NF read in a moving train going to Lucknow, accompanied by AK and SatyaVrat is one such piece. Another one is Schild's Ladder - which ladder is a construction in Differential Geometry - the reading of which has been postponed by NF until he can learn more about the said construction, completely ignorant as he is, about Differential Geometry.) But NF digresses...

The book is semi-science fictional - indeed it was nominated for the prestigious Nebula Award when it was published, but lost out to Arthur C Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama. The breathtaking erudition on rocket design, organic chemistry, psychological behavioralism, astrology (yes...the occult) and the deep knowledge the book exudes about German and Soviet history; and the way it weaves these into a complex whole, with a good deal of really funny slapstick comedy thrown in, is a mark of genius. The only reason NF thinks Pynchon will never be awarded the Nobel is because of his rather aggressive hostility to publicity or photography of any kind. Indeed the year the book got awarded the National Book Award, Pynchon refused to either show up or acknowledge it and in fact sent a goofy impersonator to give a random speech! No wonder the uptight Swedes, having balked at his stunt will probably refuse to honor him. The monarchs will probably not want the annual festivity being gatecrashed by an enterprising streaker.

Their loss though. They didn't give Gandhi a Nobel either.

A Portrait of the Mathematician as Hattori Hanzō

Think of the mathematician as Hattori Hanzō - the master swordsman/swordmaker in Kill Bill masquerading as a sushi chef in Okinawa - as a maker of katanas that the Uma Thurmans of the world - the scientists and sometimes even engineers and economists - employ to slay the Crazy 88 - the far too numerous demons of hillbillyness and general intellectual destitution. But the analogy runs its course here. Much unlike the real, rather badass samurai, The Mathematician, at the prospect of an encounter with the Crazy 88 (or pretty much any part of the real world) will promptly let loose a warm loaf of wholesome turd in his pants and hide under the skirts of our Uma Thurmans.

Comparative Advantage lets loose upon this world some rather awkward superheroes.

More Shame, More Guilt

1. Pattern Recognition (William Gibson)
2. Spook Country (William Gibson)
3. Zero History (William Gibson)
4. The Gulag Archipelago: Volume 3 (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)
5. Excession (Iain M Banks)

Recent Acquisitions: Shame and Guilt Edition

1. Waiting for Godot (Samuel Beckett)
2. Disgrace (J M Coetzee)
3. Dead Souls (Nikolai Gogol)
4. Red Plenty (Francis Spufford)
5. Parallel Stories (Péter Nádas)
6. Random Acts of Senseless Violence (Jack Womack)

याद पिंचन की आने लगी...

करीब डेढ़-दो साल पहले, लगभग पाँच-छः महीने तक की कई नाकाम कोशिशों के बाद मैंने अंततः ग्रैविटीज़ रेनबो को शेल्फ पर एक गहरी साँस लेकर छोड़ दिया था। ऐसा नहीं था कि मुझे किताब पसंद नहीं आ रही थी, बात दरअसल यह थी कि आठ सौ पन्नों की यह भारी भरकम किताब अपनी प्रख्यात जटिलता के कारण जितने समय की माँग मुझसे कर रही थी, उतना वक़्त देना मेरे लिए उन दिनों में कुछ दुसाध्य सा काम हो गया था; और अपनी छः महीनों की लगातार विफलता के बाद इस किताब का ज़िक्र भर मुझे अवसादग्रस्त-सा कर देता था। इसलिए मैंने किताब को किनारे कर, अपनी कमियों को कुछ कोसते हुए, कुछ सीधा-सरल, तो कुछ लम्पट साहित्य पढ़ कर अपना दिल बहलाया और इस हार को अपने दिमाग से दूर खदेड़ा। (विलियम एच गैस की किताब 'द टनेल' के साथ, और सैमुएल डेलेनी की किताब 'ढालग्रेन' के साथ भी कुछ ऐसी ही मुँह की खाई मैंने! इस विषय में मैं पहले भी अपना दुखड़ा रो चुका हूँ: यहाँ और यहाँ।)

लेकिन पिछले हफ्ते जी कड़ा कर के मैंने फिर इस किताब पर निगाहें दौड़ाईं और फिर से इस गद्य के समंदर में साँस रोक के गोता लगा दिया है, ठीक वैसे, जैसे किताब का नायक एक कल्ट सीन में (जिसे डैनी बोएल ने अपनी ध्वंसात्मक फिल्म 'ट्रेनस्पौटिंग' में भी फिल्माया है) कमोड के अन्दर लगाता है। 

क्रिसी दो महीनों के लिए मुंबई में है और वक़्त की कुछ ख़ास कमी भी नहीं --- अभी नहीं, तो कभी नहीं!

खूंटियों पर टंगे लोग

या दूसरे शब्दों में, सत्य साईं बाबा, ऑर्लैंडो के हाउस ऑफ़ ब्लूज़ में

कान के पीछे की भभूति से लेकर 

अमरीकी दीवारों की खूँटी तक

बाबा का मैजिक 

बाबा का मैजिक

वटवृक्षनुमा बाल से लेकर 

डिज़्नीवर्ल्ड की चाल तक 

बाबा का मैजिक 

बाबा का मैजिक 

Hacking the Life Away

A couple of months back, NF's veteran, geriatric HP laptop suffered a breathtaking four foot drop, fractured its hard disk and was declared comatose. This event led NF to buy a $250 Samsung Chromebook whose fan NF became right away, even as the old HP machine valiantly sputtered back to life with the aid of a new hard drive.

And then courtesy the ever wonderful Lifehacker, NF came to know about booting an Ubuntu distro alongside Chrome OS. It's not dual boot; you can toggle between Ubuntu and Chrome OS by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Back and Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Forward and unleash the full power of Ubuntu on your Chromebook in real time! See link here on Lifehacker and here on How-to-Geek.

It's been working like a dream. The next laptop NF ever plans to buy will be the Chromebook Pixel with a solid Ubuntu distro running alongside! 

Highly recommended!

15 मई 2013: मत्था टेक तमाशा देख

आज मई पंद्रह है। क्रिस्सी और मैं अपस्टेट की यात्रा कर रहे हैं। इस समय मैं औल्बनी की लाइब्रेरी में बैठा हूँ जो कई मायनों में स्टोनी ब्रुक की लाइब्रेरी से बेहतर है - ख़ास तौर से स्थापत्य कला के मामले में (जिसकी, हालांकि तनिक भी जानकारी मुझे नहीं है) ।

इससे कुछ समय पहले मैं बरबस ही औल्बनी के बुकस्टोर में टहलता हुआ पाया गया था। कुछ समय वहां बिताने के बाद और एक किताब खरीदने के बाद (जॉर्ज सौन्डर्स की "टेंथ ऑफ़ डिसेम्बर" - लगभग 29 डॉलरों की मुंहतोड़ चपत!) मैंने लाइब्रेरी का रुख किया।

औल्बनी का मेरे लिए एक और आकर्षण भी है: यहाँ का "न्यूयॉर्क स्टेट राइटर्स सेण्टर" जहाँ से अनेक सुप्रसिद्ध और ज़बरदस्त लेखकों का जुड़ाव रहा है (पॉल ऑस्टर, जॉर्ज सौन्डर्स, मनिल सूरी, सिरी हस्तवेट और मेरिलिन रोबिनसन उनमें से कुछ प्रख्यात नाम हैं)। लेखकों के इस अड्डे पर पहुँच कर उनमें से एक की किताब ना खरीदता, यह बात बुरी भले ही ना होती, एक अर्धसुशुप्त सा मलाल ज़रूर इधर-उधर से झांकता रहता (हालांकि तीस डॉलर का सौदा बड़ा महंगा पड़ा!)।

फिलहाल मैं यहाँ के राइटर सेण्टर का मुआयना करना जा रहा हूँ। कहते हैं तीर्थस्थल पर पहुँचने के बाद देवी के मंदिर में मत्था टेकना ज़रूरी होता है।

अपडेट: लिडिया डेविस, सुनी औल्बनी, प्रोफेसर, क्रिएटिव राइटिंग (रचनात्मक लेखन) को मैन बुकर अंतर्राष्ट्रीय पुरस्कार से नवाज़ा गया! 

In Which Mochizuki Does a Perelman

By Caroline Chen, a very nicely written, very readable introduction to the latest rumors in the circles of mathematicians - the bona fide drama queens of academia. 

Basically the scoop goes something like this: Shinichi Mochizuki, a brilliant and impossibly accomplished mathematician, now at Kyoto University (his webpage is here) has claimed to have proved a very deep result in Mathematics: the abc conjecture; but he refuses to talk about it to anyone or 'go on tour' and explain his proofs to the others. The work on which he bases his proofs has been posted by him on the internet but runs through about five hundred pages in length; and so when the others ask him to explain, he shrugs and declines the invitation, which makes him look super cool and super emo at the same time. It was reported that Akshay Venkatesh and a grad student at Yale had then found some error which Mochizuki acknowledged but corrected and reposted soon with no apparent danger of being wrong in the bigger scheme of things.

Here's to hoping Mochizuki-san has really nailed it! NF's been wrong before about opening champagne bottles prematurely (the last time it was the P versus NP problem's supposed proof by Vinay Deolalikar) but perhaps this time he'll be luckier.

Another Short Photo Essay: April in Padrauna

D

Dongri to Dubai, is a fast-paced, riveting read, narrating the rise and fall of Gangs of Mumbai since Indian independence and charting the rise of Dawood Ibrahim - the son of an honest, well respected police constable - as he destroys his competitors left, right and center to emerge as the superstar of the Mumbai mafia. The stories have a journalistic edge to them, the narrative pace never slackens and there is no dull moment at all in the tales of revenge, domination and territorial pissings of the mafia kingpins. In the meantime, the writer S Hussain Zaidi (a veteran crime reporter and the writer of Black Friday - the book on which Anurag Kashyap's fabulous film is based) also finds time to write about the old gangsters Haji Mastan (whose legendary fight with the goons on Bombay docks would go on to inspire moments of pure cinematic magic in Amitabh Bachchan's fight sequence in Deewar) and Varadarajan Mudaliar (on whose life the great Mani Ratnam directed Nayagan) and how their reign was supplanted by the cunning and muscle of Dawood.  The latter part about Dawood and Chhota Rajan and how their rift led to another intense underworld rivalry and especially the part about how the Indian intelligence agencies are allegedly propping up Rajan to take on Dawood's gang make for a delightful, exciting reading. It is easy to see how Vikram Chandra in his brilliant book Sacred Games, imbibes these stories generously and weaves them into a very satisfying coherent plot. (Chandra has written the foreword for the book and has, on numerous occasions spoken about Zaidi's invaluable help in writing Sacred Games.)

Now on to the irritating part. The standard of writing is pretty low and sentence construction is clumsy and lazy. The style is too hurried and there are many fact checking problems (RSS is claimed to be "Rashtriya Seva Sangh" ...(really?)) The chapters are not very well organized and there is often a propensity to just mention events without really documenting them. The current state of Mumbai mafia post Dawood's departure to Dubai and from there to Karachi, is not well explored either. In particular, we really don't seem to understand why from the casual shootouts during the '90s, Mumbai has suddenly become so tranquil, so much so, that it has earned the "safest city of India" moniker. The ending seems abrupt as well. A pity Zaidi doesn't seem to care for or display the literary skills of his close friend Vikram Chandra.

For those who, however, value information about the underworld and want to have a little historical peep into the mafia's workings (of a more voyeuristic nature albeit) this book is perfect. It's a wonderful afternoon time killer or as in the case of NF, the instrument that slayed the eternity that airports are. 

Recommended!

KALtoon

35 years of fabulous cartoons: KAL from The Economist. Please join the fan club! (Featuring a KAL cartoon of Indira Gandhi that got The Economist's edition featuring the cartoon banned in India!)

Recent Acquisitions

1. लाल तीन की छत (निर्मल वर्मा) (पुनः) (tr. Red Tin Roof (Nirmal Verma) (again))
2. तिरिछ (उदय प्रकाश) (tr. Bent (Uday Prakash))
3. और अंत में प्रार्थना (उदय प्रकाश) (tr. And in the End, Prayer (Uday Prakash))
4. प्रतिनिधि कवितायें (केदारनाथ सिंह) (tr. Representative Poems (Kedarnath Singh))
5. नेताजी कहिन (मनोहर श्याम जोशी) (tr. Sayeth Mr. Politician (Manohar Shyam Joshi))
6. पत्थर अलपत्थर (उपेन्द्रनाथ अश्क) (tr. Stone Al-Patthar (???) (Upendranath Ashq))
7. रसीदी टिकट (अमृता प्रीतम) (tr. Return Ticket (Amrita Preetam))
8. Dongri to Dubai: Six Decades of the Mumbai Mafia (S Hussain Zaidi)
9. अरेबा परेबा (उदय प्रकाश) (tr. Areba Pareba (???) (Uday Prakash))
10. मोहन राकेश की यादगारी कहानियां (मोहन राकेश) (tr. Memorable Stories of Mohan Rakesh (Mohan Rakesh))
11. Life & Times of Michael K (J M Coetzee)
12. अग्नि और बरखा (गिरीश कर्नाड) (अनुवाद: रामगोपाल बजाज) (tr. Fire and Rain (Girish Karnad) (Translation: Ramgopal Bajaj))
13. हयवदन (गिरीश कर्नाड) (अनुवाद: बी वी कारंत) (tr. Hayavadana (Girish Karnad) (Translation: B V Karanth))
14. मोहन दास (उदय प्रकाश) (tr. Mohan Das (Uday Prakash))
15. The Master of Petersburg (J M Coetzee)
16. जलती झाड़ी (निर्मल वर्मा) (पुनः) (tr. Burning Bush (Nirmal Verma) (again))
17. पीली छतरी वाली लड़की (उदय प्रकाश) (tr. The Girl With the Yellow Umbrella (Uday Prakash))
18. Waiting for the Barbarians (J M Coetzee)
19. खामोश! अदालत जारी है (विजय तेंदुलकर) (अनुवाद: सरोजिनी वर्मा) (tr. Silence! Court is in Session (Vijay Tendulkar) (Translation: Sarojini Verma))
20. घासीराम कोतवाल (विजय तेंदुलकर) (अनुवाद: वसंत देव) (tr. Ghasiram Constable (Vijay Tendulkar) (Translation: Vasant Dev))
21. तुगलक़ (गिरीश कर्नाड) (अनुवाद: बी वी कारंत) (tr. Tuglaq (Girish Karnad) (Translation: B V Karanth))
22. काशी का अस्सी (काशीनाथ सिंह) (tr. Kashi's Assi (Ghat) (Kashinath Singh))
23. दूसरा सप्तक (संपादक: अज्ञेय) (tr. Second Saptak (Editor: Agyeya))
24. हर बारिश में (निर्मल वर्मा) (पुनः) (tr. In Every Rain (Nirmal Verma) (again))

ऐसी भी क्या जल्दी है?

अब मैं सुराखों में 

और दरमियानों के ठहराव में 

जीना सीख गया हूँ,

मुफ़लिसी थामे है उंगली 

घूरे है सहमी, कातर नज़र से

जब कौंधे मन में ख़याल 

"झटको पल्ला,

उठ बैठो तुनक के

खदेड़ो दूर इस कुलच्छिनी की प्रेतछाया को"

हाथ टिकाये ठोड़ी पर,

सोचूँ मैं विस्मय से,

यारों से क्या कभी 

यूं बेमुरौवती करते हैं भला?

Translation:

Now, in the holes in walls

And in the stasis between moments

I have learnt how to live

Poverty clutches at my fingers

Stares with eyes awash in fear

When the thought strikes

"Spurn her company

Stand up and arrive

Chase away the unholy shadow of the skank"

Holding the chin in my hands

I wonder in amazement

Does one, with their friends

Be ever so heartless?

Lit Noir: When Dickens Met Dostoyevsky

Which he didn't...ever.

A long, literary detective story of the fake article that caused the hoax to be so persuasive - even to experts. Link: When Dickens met Dostoyevsky.

Do read it for its fabulous Borgesian twists and turns (whose works NF is currently devouring on his subway commutes). You will also be reminded of Benno von Archimboldi - the elusive fictional writer featured so prominently in Bolaño's 2666.

The meandering, somewhat long-winded article however, will appeal only to the literary minded and fans of either Dickens or Dostoyevsky or both. Be warned. 

The Party Pooper

Readers are enjoined to read through the long, trenchant, scathing and fabulous piece Evgeny Morozov has penned about Tim O'Reilly (the internet/open source evangelist) : The Meme Hustler.

For those of you who are unaware of Morozov, he's the eternal skeptic of the power-of-the-internet 'cyber-utopians' (a term he's coined) pointing out that the effects of such technology is not necessarily simple and emancipatory; and so while Twitter and Facebook and other internet tools may aid civic protests, they also aid large scale repression in China, Russia and other more protest-unfriendly places. 

One can't but help notice the similarities between Morozov (who's only 27!) and the great documentarian Adam Curtis - for questioning deep ideological biases implicit even in the best technocratic proposals and for underlining how even the best technocratic intentions can be hijacked and turned into harrowing nightmares for common, unsuspecting people.

Do read it! His is a voice that needs to be heard.

निर्मलवर्मागीरी

पढ़ना आजकल केवल सबवे की ट्रेनों में हो पाता है। 1, ई. (E) और आर. (R) ट्रेनों पर अक्सर मैं मोहन राकेश, मनोहर श्याम जोशी या निर्मल वर्मा की किताबों के पन्नों पर ताकता हुआ दिखूंगा। पांडू और मेरा इसके लिए एक ख़ास नाम भी था: निर्मलवर्मागीरी। वैसे अगर हमें उस समय रोबर्तो बोलान्यो का नाम-पता मालूम होता, तो हम इसे बोलान्योगीरी की संज्ञा भी दे सकते थे। (वैसे अब जब इस बारे में सोचता हूँ तो लगता है कि निश्चित ही हम दोनों इस घुम्मकड़ लेखनी की प्रवृत्ति को बोलान्योगीरी ही कहते - निर्मल वर्मा के उदास, गहरे और आत्मा-हन्तारक रूप से दुखी कथानकों के बजाए हमें बोलान्यो की बकैती और पंक शैली (अमरीकी संगीत वाला पंक, भारतीय कमल नहीं!) अधिक जमती (वैसे भी उन दिनों हम पंक और ग्रंज संगीत के दीवाने हुए जा रहे थे!)) लेकिन नाम में ले दे के कुछ रखा है नहीं, इसीलिए मेरा इस प्रकार का व्यवहार निर्मलवर्मागीरी ही कहलायेगा।

इस बार घर से लौटने के समय प्रेमचंद के किताबों की  के गठरी के साथ मैं कई एक कविताओं के संग्रह भी उठा लाया - इनमें तारसप्तक और चाँद का मुंह टेढ़ा है जैसे प्रतिष्ठित संकलन तो थे ही, साथ में केदारनाथ सिंह, कुंवर नारायण, और गुलज़ार की कविताओं की किताबें भी थीं। (वैसे नामांकरण के बारे में पुनः सोचते हुए लगता है की मुक्तिबोध के बारे में भी ले दे के हम दोनों अनजान ही थे (शायद पांडू को अधिक मालूम था, लेकिन अपनी तरफ से मैं तो मुक्तिबोध का बस नाम ही जानता था - वो भी स्कूल के हिंदी सिलेबस के नाते) नहीं तो बकैती में मुक्तिबोध बोलान्यो से कुछ कम नहीं कहे जायेंगे!) 

सोचा था कि इस बार समय निकाल के कुछ अच्छी कविताओं का शौकिया अंग्रेज़ी अनुवाद करूंगा और ब्लॉग पे छाप डालूँगा। लेकिन आलस और आत्म-संशय के मारे (मनोहर श्याम जोशी के शब्द) कुछ ख़ास किया नहीं। अब जब ज़रा सा मौका मिला है तो सोचता हूँ कि शुरुआत करने में कोई बुराई नहीं है। इसलिए अपनी खुद की एक कविता का अनुवाद करता हूँ। वैसे ताज्जुब की बात है कि हालांकि कविताओं की कोई समझ बूझ नहीं है मुझमें, ये एक कविता जो लिखी थी पांडू के लिए (या फिर पांडू की एक तेजस्वी स्मृति के लिए) वह मुझे अभी तक पसंद है और इसे सुनने सुनाने में मुझे ज़रा भी शर्मिंदगी नहीं महसूस होती है। क्या जाने क्या कारण है? इसे इस ब्लॉग पे मैं पहले भी लिख चुका हूँ। यहाँ फिलहाल, उसे पुनः लिख कर अनुवाद पेश करता हूँ:

सोचा आज कि लिखूं 

एक टेस्टी तुम्हारी याद में 

याद उस दोपहर की उबासी की 

जब ब्रह्माण्ड तुम्हारे मुख में विलीन हो जाता था 

जब तिरछी पड़ती उस उदास धूप में 

तुम मुझे सत्य का दर्शन पढ़ाते थे 

और अँधेरे कोनों में जला कटा 

कुढ़े मन से 

एक साक्षर, सिनिकल सी मुस्कान लिए 

मैं, तुम्हारा प्रतिकार किया करता था 

जलता था मैं तुमसे 

जलता हूँ 

ताउम्र शायद जलता रहूँगा

अनुवाद:

Thought that I will write today

A testimonial in your memory

A memory of that idle afternoon

When the universe would dissolve in your mouth

When in the slanting shade of that sad sunlight

You would teach me the philosophy of truth

And in the dark corners unyielding

With a disgruntled mien

With an educated, cynical smile 

I would resist you

I was jealous of you

Am jealous

Lifelong perhaps, shall remain jealous 

Meanwhile, Dibakar Bannerjee is all Smiles

A stunning piece of reportage - Daniel Brook writes a lengthy, even meditative piece on the rise of a once great city and its current aspirations of world domination: Head of the Dragon: The Rise of New Shanghai.

Do read the brilliant essay. This is journalism as the way it should be.

Ichi Kyu Hachi Yon

NF finished this book about a couple of weeks back and overall, it'll be fair to say that he has mixed feelings about it. For a twelve hundred page tome and for being the Murakami opus it's now made out to be, the book has surprisingly little to offer. The fantastic elements are unconvincing and do not add any real charm to the book. No real connections to the Orwellian 1984 either - symbollically, thematically, literarily or otherwise. One wonders why Murakami had to choose that particular year as the setting for this book, except for the multilingual pun that the title bears. Or perhaps Nanga Fakir didn't get the book at all!

However, during the latter half, the great master does oblige. Especially after the introduction of Ushikawa - that unctuous, ugly, unsympathetic yet supremely tragic and even heroic-in-his-own-way character. That is when Murakami veers into the Paul Auster territory - the hardboiled zone in which detectives are too smart for themselves and their endeavours - initially (very fruitfully) directed outwards at their unwitting objects of detection take a more inward turn and unmoor their own masters, as the boundaries between the watcher and the watched become blurred, as days and nights pile on each other, as all meaning is slowly sucked out and the private eye becomes one with the object of detection in an ascetic embrace. Not to say that Murakami is aping Auster here - far from it - in fact he's worked with such themes for a long time now and all these qualities made his older, more compact Sputnik Sweetheart a brilliant, fabulous read.

Do read this mammoth, for Murakami rescues the otherwise clunky parts in the last four hundred or so wonderfully written pages. A good book overall, but we know Murakami is capable of much, much greater feats.